Some WW1 action from Third Wire's First Eagles 2, with my flight of Albatros D.Vs escorting DFW C.Vs on an attack on a Brit airfield. Having seen the C.Vs safely back over the lines after their attack, then mixing it up with SE5as and Camels, eventually managing the 'ace-in-a-day' score of five victories with no losses to my flight of four D.Vs and no losses for the C.Vs either.

Edited July 21, 20205 yr by Chock

I dabbled in "Rise of Flight" for a while - lucky to survive.  That last shot says it all - both wings gone on one side and a stopped prop.  A parachute would have been nice.

1 hour ago, olderndirt said:

I dabbled in "Rise of Flight" for a while - lucky to survive.  That last shot says it all - both wings gone on one side and a stopped prop.  A parachute would have been nice.

What annoyed me about Rise of Flight (and I bought it on day one of its release, hoping it would be good) was even though it looked great, I found the AI was annoyingly unbalanced and so I quickly gave up on it because of that. Essentially the problem was, that it was not even remotely close to simulating the real nuances of WW1 air combat, which was admittedly potentially very vicious, but it was also very tactical, and none of that tactical stuff made it into Rise of Flight.

What makes WW1 fighter combat really interesting, is that much of the time it was a case of patrols climbing to a reasonably high altitude, then setting off for a patrol, potentially spotting a target, which would often spot your flight too. Then it was a case of both patrols jockeying for position, taking into account cloud cover, wind drift, sun direction, escape routes etc. Then also taking into account numbers, aircraft types and the possibility for other patrols in the area using such tactical maneuvering between these groups to their advantage to set up an ambush. So a lot of WW1 air combat was a lengthy maneuvering situation, one where tactical thinkers who were prepared to spend time stalking other aircraft and picking their moment to either engage or perhaps decide not to if things were not favourable, were the ones who were successful.

A good example of this is Manfred Von Richthofen. Much nonsense is talked about him, but the reality is that he was under no starry illusion that his job was akin to some sort of chivalrous aerial joust, as is often ludicrously portrayed in movies, and quite a few combat flight sims too. On the contrary, he knew warfare was about trying to have all the advantages you could muster, and if that meant stabbing your enemy in the back, and preferably when he wasn't even looking, then so much the better.

If you read his book (which is worth doing) you'll observe that Richthofen made no bones about stating this either: 'fighter pilots have to rove in the area allotted to them, in any way they please, and when they find an enemy, to attack and shoot them down, anything else is rubbish'.  He would sometimes circle on the edge of the whirling mass of a dogfight, out of range of the fight, waiting for someone to be in a disadvantaged position on the edge of the fray, whereupon he would swoop mercilessly upon on them, closing in behind them to almost collision range, then hammer them with very carefully aimed accurate short bursts of fire. Some of the more romantic types of the era were critical of what they saw as a not very chivalrous way of going about things when it came to Von Richthofen's pragmatic and entirely realistic view of warfare, but as WW2 ace Douglas Bader once said when asked what his 'score' was: 'war is not a game of cricket', so among the aces of WW1 and WW2, he was certainly not alone in being a realist. Bader's score incidentally, was a pretty impressive 22 victories, plus another four shared with other pilots, which places him quite high on the list for an Allied pilot in WW2, and it probably would have been a lot more had he not been shot down in August 1941, most likely by friendly fire from another Spitfire it would seem if the research into combat losses and victory claims is anything to go by.

Back with WW1 and flight sims however, hardly any sort of tactical behaviour was possible in Rise of Flight. For example, you could try to hide in clouds, where in reality it would literally have been impossible to spot you, yet the AI enemies would not only detect you, but also shoot you whilst you were in the middle of a massive cumulus cloud. The moment I saw that Rise of Flight did that sort of thing, it didn't matter how pretty it looked, it got uninstalled. I don't mind air combat sims being tough, but I draw the line at the AI cheating in terms of realism.

First Eagles 2 (and 1 for that matter although 1 does not run on Windows 10) is not perfect in this regard, but it is very much better than Rise of Flight is, in that AI aircraft will set up ambushes and do sneaky stuff,  sometimes they will not be interested in you, or not spot you and so on, and you can indeed maneuver tactically to give yourself advantages in combat and the AI will do so too. So whilst First Eagles is not as pretty-looking as Rise of Flight, it is a very much better simulation of that era of air combat, which is why I still fire it up, whereas I don't even know where my copy of Rise of Flight is, and I don't care either, which is a shame really because it is graphically very nice. On the plus side for First Eagles, the simple graphics mean you can crank every graphic setting up to eleven and it still runs at a blistering frame rate and it has an excellent set of controls which make dogfighting challenging but also practical.

Edited July 22, 20205 yr by Chock

In four years pilots went from friendly waves - the occasional sidearm shot - the observer with his MG on a rail - the interrupter gear - twin MG's firing forward - cantelevered winged monoplanes.  If nothing else, wars do engender progress.

Edited July 22, 20205 yr by olderndirt

24 minutes ago, olderndirt said:

In four years pilots went from friendly waves - the occasional sidearm shot - the observer with his MG on a rail - the interrupter gear - twin MG's firing forward - cantelevered winged monoplanes.  If nothing else, wars do engender progress.

Absolutely, but what is actually a more amazing statistic, is that in the space of four years, aircraft in WW1 went from essentially being the same as the one Louis Bleriot flew 21 miles in to cross the English Channel, which weighed 507 lb and had a 25 hp engine, to a twin-engined aircraft weighing 10,884 lb, equipped with twin 260 hp engines, which managed to fly 1,880 miles all the way across the Atlantic.

Perhaps more amazing, is that some air forces were still using canvas-covered biplanes at the start of WW2, but by the end of it, there were ballistic missiles which actually went up into space on their flight trajectory. So yup, unfortunately the desire for us to kill one another more efficiently does tend to motivate us as a species better than most other endeavours.

Edited July 22, 20205 yr by Chock

Perhaps, given 2020's climate, we are due another war? We could all do with a bit of progress. Then again another war may quite literally take us back to sticks and stones to paraphrase a saying which is quite old now. 

No denying the Germans had some crazy looking paint schemes back then - I never did build many Airfix WWI kits as a boy for that same reason! 

@Chock, Rise of Flight has some good eye candy, what about First Eagles?

23 hours ago, olderndirt said:

I dabbled in "Rise of Flight" for a while - lucky to survive....

+1

Anyway, Alan, great pictures, here, from the RoF....those were some of the best WW I Classic planes in the SIM...(always love formation and multiple planes in the single shot)....!!

And that last shot...oh well...a picture is worth a thousand words, as they say...!!

6 hours ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

@Chock, Rise of Flight has some good eye candy, what about First Eagles?

Essentially, what you see in those pics is how First Eagles looks. It's a flight sim from some time ago and so like most Third Wire flight sims, which were never really stunning lookers, the visuals are adequate rather than stunning.

On 7/22/2020 at 5:15 PM, Chock said:

Essentially, what you see in those pics is how First Eagles looks. It's a flight sim from some time ago and so like most Third Wire flight sims, which were never really stunning lookers, the visuals are adequate rather than stunning.

Thank you sir, that is helpful.  I much prefer stunning but sounds like the flight dynamics are better with First Eagles